Gaylord Nelson & Earth Day: The Making of the Modern Environmental Movement

nelsonearthday.net

A online exhibit and digital archive dedicated to exploring the career of Senator Gaylord Nelson and showcasing his grassroots, justice-oriented vision for a "national teach-in" on the environment, which became the first Earth Day. Explore this collaboration between the Wisconsin Historical Society and the Nelson Institute for Environmental studies here.

New Books in Environmental Studies

In-depth interviews with authors of some of the most exciting recent work in the environmental humanities. Listen to my latest conversations below or browse all my episodes here. Subscribe in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Race and Environment in U.S. History

History 227: Explorations in the history of race and ethnicity

An intensive three-week summer course taught in the summer of 2018 in the University of Wisconsin–Madison Department of History. Learn more and explore the syllabus here.

The Edge Effects podcast

Conversations with pathbreaking thinkers inside the academy and beyond about cultural and environmental change across the full sweep of human history. Subscribe in Apple Podcasts and Google Play. Enjoy recent episodes I have co-produced below.

The Water Isn't Fine: A Conversation with Anna Clark

Muslims Stand Up for Environmental Justice: A Conversation with Huda Alkaff

Woke Environmentalism

Edge Effects – July 31, 2018

This is not a story of poor and racialized Americans having a belated environmental awakening. It is instead the tale of them beating down to the doors of institutions and movements that have overlooked them… [read more]

The Monuments We Never Built

Edge Effects — August 22, 2017

Today, in the wake of Charleston and Charlottesville, a small number of those pedestals stand empty. Many have recommended explanatory plaques be added to the monuments that remain. Others have called for new monuments, the public memorials to slavery and statues of people like Revels that would already be more than a century old had Jim Crow not robbed the quarries, had white northerners not retreated from the battle for the war’s legacy... [read more]

Freedom's Dystopia

Humanities NOW — April 4, 2013

The sickness and suffering that accompanied emancipation were not inevitable, even in this political context. There was sufficient epidemiological knowledge, laboring hands, and federal funds to prevent this stillbirth of freedom for hundreds of thousands of former slaves... [read more]

A Confederate Shrine, Submerged

Edge Effects October 7, 2014

“It would be a shrine of the nation—if the South had won the war"... The premise carried the usual seduction of a pithy counterfactual. But it did not stand to reason... [read more]

Spitball Bearings: Baseball and the Unruly World

Edge Effects — October 13, 2015

Baseball has always been more field research than lab science. From its varied fields of play to their permeable boundaries, it invites dynamism, instability, and messiness. Here’s a starting lineup of moments in which the sport’s vulnerability to, and dependence on, the material world have become especially visible... [read more]